The Safety of His Arms
by Mystic83
Summary: Sydney Bristow always thought the tape she had sent Director Kendall right before she had her memory wiped told the whole story of her missing two years. What she didn’t know is there was a whole dimension to her life during that time that she left out


The first memory and the last memory I have of my missing two years are one in the same. He's carrying me in his arms out of the fire, out of the flames. I know I should be scared. That my life is changing and maybe not for the better. The future is hazy and probably full of pain. I've made choices I've not always been happy about. But I'm not afraid. I'm under his protection and the safety of his arms.   
  
I'm not scared at all.

* * *

Sydney jumped up with a start. The first thing she noticed was that the room she was in was spinning uncontrollably. Once the spinning had stopped, she realized a second thing.   
  
"Where the hell am I?" she whispered. She slid out of bed, pushing her toes heavily into the ground just to make sure she wasn't still dreaming. It felt real enough to her. There was a mirror beside the bed which she walked over to as she got her bearings.   
  
Her face was covered in bruises, and there was a cut above her left temple that had begun to bleed when she had woken up a few seconds earlier. Her head was pounding, and she was wearing clothes that she had never seen before in her life.   
  
She was about to ask herself what had happened when the events of the night before came flooding back. "Francie," she whispered. Tears began to stream down her face as she realized that in all probability her best friend was dead. She had been an innocent in all of this, killed only because of her ties to Sydney.   
  
And then this was the horrible memory of her own funeral. Watching all the men in her life mourn her death. Seeing the pain that they felt without being able to tell them that she was really only two feet away and very much alive.   
  
There was a soft knock on the door. It pulled Sydney back into the reality of the situation. She was presumably locked up in a room she didn't recognize by people she couldn't yet identify, the ones that had put her through the agony of watching her funeral. They intended to do god knows what before they let her go. If they let her go. Hiding behind the door as it opened was the only real option she had.   
  
When she saw who entered the room, she was glad that she had chosen to hide. Without a second thought, she put Sark into a chokehold and pushed him up against the nearest wall. "What the hell did you do to me, you bastard?" she screamed right in his ear.   
  
"I… saved… you," he managed to choke out.   
  
Realizing there was no way she could get the full story with him gasping for air, she let go of the hold. He turned around and glared at her, rubbing his now sore neck.   
  
"I thought you were in CIA custody," she said, crossing her arms and leaning against the dresser in the room. She made sure that she was still in a position to attack in case he made a move for his gun or any other weapon.   
  
"And I thought Allison Doren was supposed to kill you. Some things change."   
  
"I see," she said with a nod. "Let's get back to my original point. What did you do to me?"   
  
"Nothing," he answered. Then, with a smirk, he added, "Yet."   
  
"You really want me to kill you, don't you?"   
  
"I've always wanted to see if you could."   
  
"As much as I enjoy our witty banter, Sark, you're still avoiding my point. Why am I here?"   
  
Sark laughed, making Sydney a little uncomfortable. She couldn't remember ever hearing this man show any sort of emotion besides cockiness and a genuine disinterest.   
  
He walked over and sat on the bed. "I saved your life, Sydney. You should be grateful."   
  
"When exactly did you save my life? Because I don't recall a time where you chose to save my life instead of end it."   
  
"You lost consciousness after your fight with Allison. The Covenant was determined to kill you at first. They wanted to burn down your whole house with you in it. I convinced them that you were an asset because of your connection to the prophecy, which actually might make you wish I had let them kill you. They still set fire to your house. That couldn't be changed."   
  
"So, Allison and Will are really dead?" Sydney asked. The thought of having lost both of her best friends in one day ripped through her.   
  
"Not necessarily."   
  
"And who the hell is the Covenant?"   
  
"I'm sorry. I can't tell you anymore, though." He took a deep breath. "Listen. I know that you and I have never been on the best terms. What we have though isn't pure unadulterated loathing."   
  
"Speak for yourself," she mumbled.   
  
He ignored her comment. "We don't hate each other, no matter how hard we try to. I respect you, Sydney. If things were different, I'd probably fancy you. But for now, respect is enough to get me to break some of my alliances."   
  
"I thought your loyalties were flexible," she said, mocking his British accent.   
  
"They are. But usually the person I'm flexing them for has something substantial to offer me. This I'm doing out of the kindness of my heart."   
  
"What exactly are you doing?" Sydney asked as she took a seat next to him on the bed. She attributed her relaxed state around him to the trauma she had just been through. Under normal conditions, she would probably have killed him already.   
  
"I'm warning you. The Covenant has you now. And that is not a good place to be."   
  
"What do they want with me?" she asked.   
  
"They want you as one of their operatives." He held up his hand to silence her protestation. "They think that their normal brainwashing techniques will work to make you forget your old life and move on to a new life as Julia Thorne."   
  
"They don't know how stubborn I am, then."   
  
"Your stubbornness is not going to be what saves you this time. What's going to get you through hell and back is your Project Christmas Training. The program instilled a strong resistance to any form of brainwashing in you. The Covenant is destined to fail."   
  
"So why tell me all of this?"   
  
"Because you're going to want to let them think they're succeeding eventually."   
  
She shook her head. "No, I'm going to kick their asses as soon as possible so I can return home to my life."   
  
"Sydney, you always put your country first before you and your personal life. Why should that change? The Covenant is gaining more power by the hour. If you don't find a way to stop them now, they're going to be impossible to take down. It won't be a walk in the park like the Alliance and SD-6."   
  
"So, you're suggesting I go on letting all the people I love think I'm dead? That is the most ridiculous suggestion you've made to me yet. And there have been some crazy ones."   
  
"If you go back now, Sydney, the Covenant will find you and kill you."   
  
"I'll take that risk."   
  
"But can you risk the lives of those you love? Your father? Marshall Flinkman? Your precious Vaughn?" He sighed and looked her straight in the eye. "Don't get me wrong. The Covenant will kill you eventually, but they are going to start with your friend and family. They will destroy your life utterly before they choose to end it."   
  
Sydney looked at him with tears in her eyes. For a second, she had forgotten how cruel and harsh a man he was. With that last statement, she was suddenly reminded of why he wasn't her ally. "I can't."   
  
"You can and you will. It won't be easy, but it has to be done." Sark stood up. "Now I'm going to have to drug you so you lose consciousness. The Covenant put me in charge of getting you to their facility in St. Petersburg, and I intend to do just that."   
  
Sark pulled out a hypodermic needle and filled it with some mystery liquid. Before he could inject it in Sydney's arm, she stood up and walked out of his reach. "Before you do this, I want you to answer me two questions. If you're truthful, I won't put up a fight."   
  
"Ask away."   
  
"Why are you working with the Covenant? And how did you get out of CIA custody?"   
  
"I'm working with the Covenant for multiple reasons. One being that since your mother went awol, I need a new employer. And two, no organization has ever been able to keep me if I didn't want them to. I didn't want the CIA to keep hold of me, so I escaped."   
  
"As simple as that?" Sydney asked as she extended her forearm.   
  
He pushed the needle into her skin and emptied its contents. "As simple as that. The other reasons will just have to wait for later. "   
  
Sydney felt his arms go up around her as her body went limp.

* * *

Sark had been right when he told her the Covenant would do anything and everything to try to turn her. They started with a combination of sensory deprivation and electroshock. Half the time they were torturing her, she expected Sark to come running in, demanding they stop at once.   
  
It was odd. She wasn't exactly sure when she had started to consider him an ally. A good guess would have been between the time Dr. Oleg Matrijik started telling her that Sydney Bristow didn't exist anymore and when she started to enjoy the sensation of electricity shooting through her body. It helped her know she was still alive.   
  
He didn't contact her at all through these long days of brainwashing mixed with torture.   
  
However, the day she decided to take his word for truth and begin to show the Covenant signs of her breaking, he visited her cell.   
  
"You believe me now, don't you?" he asked from the tiny window that always stayed shut, cutting out all light in her cell.   
  
"No. I just think it's the only way I can get some decent food around here."   
  
"You're joking. That's good. It means you haven't lost all your sanity." He paused, and silence filled the air.   
  
"Sark?" she asked tentatively. "Are you still there?"   
  
"I know this is hard for you, Sydney. But you're on the right track. Just keep letting them think they're breaking you. Don't let it go too quickly. You have all the time in the world."   
  
"I want to get this over with and go home," she mumbled.   
  
"I know." The tiny window slammed shut again.

* * *

After that night, she made sure to let Matrijik hear her falter everyone once in a while. She also let him know that the narcotics and hypnosis techniques had no effect on her. All her pent-up anger and frustration at the situation she had been thrust into came out during those times he asked her who she was. When she promised to kill him one day, she really meant it.   
  
The drugs they were giving her were powerful things. There were periods of hours, maybe even days, that she didn't remember. Once she woke up with a throbbing pain in her abdomen only to realize that the Covenant must have operated on her when she had lost consciousness. The cut was not going to heal properly, she could tell that already. There would be scarring, and she didn't even want to think about the reasons behind it.   
  
She didn't see Sark again, but she knew he thought she was on the right path. Matrijik withheld food from her, but miraculously, the food he always withdrew from her cell, the mashed potatoes, the turkey, always ended up back in her cell during the early hours of morning. She knew that it was Sark's doing.   
  
The image bombardment almost got her. The life that the fictitious Julia Thorne lived wasn't the greatest. Being an orphan, becoming a contract killer. However, compared with her life, it seemed like a walk in the park.   
  
Every time she felt herself slipping, her Project Christmas training kicked in, and she was sucked out of the fantasy life and back into reality. This was the one reason she was able to keep up her charade. Unlike the Covenant, she knew that there was no way their tactics would work. It was physically impossible for her to crack.   
  
This constant show of small weaknesses that weren't true continued for months. She was at the facility for a total of six months before she knew that the Covenant had bought her ruse.   
  
Sark came to her again the night before she had a large meeting set up with a group of high Covenant officials. Matrijik had told her that she was progressing nicely and that others wanted to see the progress, too.   
  
To her surprise, the tiny window didn't open. The whole cell door did. She flinched at the sudden burst of sunlight.   
  
"Sydney," Sark whispered.   
  
"My name's Julia," she mumbled, more by habit than on purpose.   
  
"You can cut the crap with me, Bristow. I just wanted to give you another head's up as to what's about to happen."   
  
"Last time you did that I ended up suffering through torture. So, I kindly decline the courtesy. Please show your way out."   
  
"Funny." Sark entered the cell and took a seat on the floor next to her. "The Covenant is going to test your brainwashing tomorrow. They're going to bring a man in front of you and instruct you to kill him. You have to do it."   
  
"No. I will not kill an innocent man," she answered defiantly.  
  
"Sydney, if you don't kill him, that doesn't mean he's going to be kept alive. He's been taken by the Covenant. He's dead no matter what you chose to do. If he dies to gain the Covenant's trust in you, at least his death has meaning."   
  
"I don't think I can do it," she said softly.   
  
Sark smirked and stood up. "If you have any problems, just imagine that it's me."   
  
She looked up at him as he moved to close the door. "Maybe I won't have a problem."   
  
"Humor. Good."   
  
The door slammed shut making her jump.   
  
Literally minutes after Sark left her cell, two burly men came to take her away. After leading her to a random room, they instructed her to change into something nice and wait for them to return. She quickly picked out a suit and put it on. Walking over to the small mirror on the wall, she tried to adjust to the new color they had dyed her hair a few weeks ago. It was now platinum blond and rather ugly. In the back of her mind, she found that she couldn't wait until she could get an opportunity to redye it a nicer shade. If she had to have blonde hair, at least it could be stylish.   
  
The men came to pick her up again after five minutes. She was led into a large room with a handful of people seated behind a long table.

"Here goes," she mumbled before switching to her Julia Thorne mindset.

* * *

As soon as she had passed their test, they took her out of the prison cell and gave her a real room. They didn't have enough faith or trust in her to let her go out on missions for the first three weeks, so she amused herself trying to absorb as much information about the facility as she could manage.   
  
And Sark came to her every night around midnight. Even when she was allowed out on missions, he still made sure to visit her. Every night for three months, she had come to expect his knock.   
  
"You know, I've actually come to rely on your visits," she mentioned one night.   
  
"Why would that be?" he said looking up from his laptop. "We barely speak when I'm here."   
  
"But you keep coming. Why is that?"   
  
"I don't know. Piss me off and I'll stop."   
  
Sydney sighed and flung herself back onto the bed. "I think it has something to do with the fact that I can actually be the real me when I'm around you. There's no pretending."   
  
"I'm glad I could be of service," he said without looking up from the computer screen.   
  
"Sark?"   
  
"What, Sydney?"   
  
"What were the other reasons you are working for the Covenant?"   
  
Sark shut the laptop and turned to her. "It's been killing you not knowing, hasn't it?" She nodded. "Well, one of the other reasons is that I knew you needed me. If you were to stay strong in your infiltration of the Covenant, you needed an ally on the inside. Someone to do exactly what I'm doing."   
  
"Why, Sark! That sounded almost as if you had a heart." She laughed at her own joke.   
  
"This is why I don't tell you anything," he said, reopening his laptop.   
  
"Awww, come on!" She got up off the bed and made her way over to where he was sitting. "Don't get all pouty on me."   
  
"Men like me don't pout."   
  
"Then how do you explain that protruding bottom lip?" she asked as she worked her way over to the tray of alcohol she had been compiling over the last few months. It really helped her get through the nights if she self-medicated. She grabbed two cups and began to pour out some whiskey.   
  
"Genetics. My father had the same lips."   
  
"A mention of your past? Is the world coming to an end?"   
  
"You're right. I shouldn't have said that. The less you know about me and my past, the better."   
  
"Come on. Tell me a little about your father. I always assumed you were an orphan whose parents tragically died in an automobile accident or something to that effect. It's interesting finding out how completely wrong I was."   
  
"Actually, I was practically an orphan." He snapped his laptop shut and began to pack it up. "But I'm not about to tell you my problems."   
  
"How about one last drink before you leave then?" Sydney said holding up the two whiskeys.   
  
"I thought I told you to stop drinking. The Covenant is going to realize you're faking being Julia Thorne if you keep waking up with a hangover."   
  
"I'm not that bad." She walked over and thrust one of the glasses at him. "Drink."   
  
Sark glared but did as he was commanded. He shoved the drink back into her hands. "Are you happy?"   
  
"Extremely," she said with a mischievous grin as he began to wobble a little. "Do you need to lie down, Sark?"   
  
"What the hell did you do, Sydney?" he asked as she helped him over to the bed.   
  
"I just slipped a little something into your drink. It'll help you eliminate all those nasty feelings you've been having lately." She reached over his motionless body and pulled something out of the nightstand.   
  
When he realized it was a knife, he tried his best to reason with her but his lips were no longer under his control. Wherever she had gotten this drug, it was extremely good.

Smiling, Sydney winked at him as the knife caught the light radiating from the bedside lamp. She looked down at the weapon in her hands. "I never thought I would have an affection for knives. Especially after what happened with Noah. And then Will." She looked back up at him. "You think I would be afraid of them, but they intrigue me."

She watched him struggle for words. "Oh, it kills you not to be able to make little jabs at me, doesn't it?"

Sitting back down on the bed, she held the knife up to his neck. "I've been practicing this moment for weeks now during all those long horrors of sensory deprivation and torture. I've thought over and over in my head of what I want to say to you. What are you supposed to say to the worst piece of human filth you've ever met? They don't write books on the topic, that's for sure." 

She sat back on her feet and looked him steadily in the eye. "I might never have liked you. Point in fact I despise you. But that doesn't suggest I don't respect you. You were a master of a profession that's most difficult to master. Dying in our sleep, or at least our near sleep, is a luxury our kind is rarely afforded. My gift to you."   
  
She ran the blade lightly along his chin scraping the surface of his cheek and causing it to bleed a little. After a few moments of playing with him, she sighed and sat up. She threw the knife back into the nightstand and laughed. "You didn't think I was actually going to kill you, did you? A girl has to find ways to stay amused, and a little knife play never hurt anyone."   
  
Sark realized that he had begun to regain some movement in his lips. "What are you playing at?"   
  
"I just wanted to remind you that just because you think you're in control doesn't mean it's actually true. I could walk out of here at any moment and return to my life in L.A."   
  
Sark wiggled his fingers as blood began to pulse through them again. "Life in Los Angeles might not be how you remember it."   
  
"What is that supposed to mean?"   
  
Sark pulled himself up slowly so that his back was resting against her headboard. "I don't think you're in any position to demand an explanation. Need I remind you that you just tried to kill me?"   
  
"I was never going to go through with it."   
  
"Uh huh. I'm supposed to believe that, right?"   
  
"Stop trying to change the subject. You always do that." She flopped back down so that she was looking eye to eye with him. "Why would life in Los Angeles be any different than I remember? I've only been gone for nine months."   
  
"Nine months can be a long time in the life of a spy, Syd."   
  
"Don't call me Syd. Only my friends call me Syd."   
  
"Come on. You practically admitted I was your lifeline about fifteen minutes ago. Now you're trying to convince me that I'm not even your friend. I don't think so."   
  
"Don't sound so smug," she said as she pulled herself off the bed. "You might think you have a handle on me and what I'm like, but you have no idea. Nothing in this poor excuse for a relationship that's between us is based on reality. I don't know two things about you, who you are, why you're you. Friends know those things." She was finally getting frustrated with him.   
  
"I can't tell you any of those things. It's for the best"   
  
"Maybe the best thing for me is to give up this deception and go back to the CIA. Maybe you're just doing what you think would be best for yourself."   
  
Sark sighed and sat up. She noticed it took him awhile, but he managed to do it on his own. "In the beginning, yes, this whole plan was mainly to benefit me. But it's not like that anymore. You have to trust me when I tell you that you're better off finishing what you've started."   
  
"I can finish what I've started back home. I don't have to be here obeying your every word and command. This whole situation makes no sense."   
  
Sark stood up rather shakily but managed to stay on his feet. He walked over and picked up his laptop which was still sitting on her desk. "I'm going to leave you now. You need to get some sleep. Don't start drinking again. And don't try to come up with another way to kill me. The first time was enough to both get your point across and annoy me."   
  
Sydney glared at him as he shut the door behind himself. "You don't have to worry about that, Sark. I won't try to kill you." She got up and grabbed the gun she had been hiding under her bed. "Because, after tomorrow's mission, I'm not going to be here much longer."   
  
Sticking the gun in the waistband of her pants, she opened the door of her room and peeked out into the hallway. No one was in sight. "Perfect," she whispered before slipping out the door.

* * *

It wasn't easy to get away from the men assigned to guard duty on her mission in Rome, but she managed to give them the slip around the Trevi Fountain. As soon as she was sure no one was following her, she found a pay phone and called the only man she was sure would believe her when she said she was alive and working for the Covenant.   
  
"Kendall, this is Mountaineer. Agent ID-Class USS-CI-2300844. Requesting extraction."   
  
"Repeat that ID number."   
  
"2300844. Kendall, it's me. I've been working with the Covenant for the past nine months. I just now managed to get away from them. I can't say much more over the phone."   
  
"There's a safe house in Tuscany. I believe you've been there before."   
  
"Understood." Sydney hung up the phone and let out the breath she didn't know she was holding. It was done. There was no turning back now.   
  
She was at the safe house in Tuscany for six hours before Kendall arrived. When he saw her for the first time, she noticed all the color drain from his face. The CIA really hadn't known that she was alive. They had no clue.   
  
"Kendall," she said tentatively.   
  
He snapped back into action and threw a bag of things at her. "There are blood tests, DNA tests, memory tests. You name it. It's in there. And you're going to take them all before we even start this conversation."   
  
Sydney nodded and pulled the first one out of the bag. If she were going to do this properly, she would have to let him do it his way.   
  
The tests were completed and analyzed within the hour.   
  
"Agent Bristow, I'm sorry for my gruffness, but I had to be sure."   
  
"I understand." She paused to take a deep breath. "Does my father know I'm alive? Does Vaughn?"   
  
"Mr. Vaughn and your father will be informed at the earliest possible opportunity--"   
  
"So they don't know," she interrupted. "What about Will? Did he make it?"   
  
"Miss Bristow, what you've been through may have national security implications."   
  
"I need to talk to them. I need you to get them on the phone."   
  
"All your questions will be answered--   
  
"Right now!" she screamed.   
  
"--in time," he finished. "First, we need to know what happened to you."   
  
The rest of her conversation was just as frustrating. He wanted to know everything that had happened to her in the past nine months without revealing anything that had gone on in Los Angeles. She couldn't help wondering what was so different that he was avoiding telling her about. She started to believe that Kendall was withholding the truth for her best interest.   
  
That changed when he insinuated that Vaughn had moved on.   
  
"He loves me," she hissed. "Nine months is nothing."   
  
Irritated with the lack of information she was receiving, she decided to take the next step and get it from the source. She was going to find Vaughn as soon as possible.

* * *

Fifteen hours later, she found herself sitting in a car wishing that she hadn't made that decision. Vaughn was standing in front of her with a beautiful blond in his arms. Thoughts of Sydney seemed to be the furthest thing from his mind.   
  
"He moved on," she whispered staring at the couple embracing. "Sark was right. Kendall was right. Things have changed."   
  
A car drove by with two men in it talking into what seemed to be some kind of communication device.   
  
"I'm putting him in danger," she said to herself. "Just me being here, looking at him, is putting him in danger."   
  
Snapping out of her momentary lapse in judgment, she started the car and put it into drive. She reached across the car to the passenger's seat and grabbed her cell phone. Dialing the first number she thought of, she was surprised to hear him pick up after the first ring.   
  
"I'm coming back," she said softly.   
  
"I told you that you shouldn't have gone, Sydney. Why didn't you listen to me?"   
  
"I'm coming back, Sark. Isn't that enough for you?" she screamed. She slammed the phone shut and glared at it. This man would never understand the hell he was putting her through.   
  
Knowing that she should have some sort of extracting plan, she used her few moments of freedom from the Covenant to do just that. She dialed another number on her phone.   
  
"This is Kendall."   
  
"I'll do whatever you want."   
  
She snapped the phone closed without saying anything else. Too much had gone on already for her to try to go into more depth with him.

* * *

Returning to St. Petersburg was one of the hardest things for her to do. She didn't want to be leading a double life again. That was something she thought she had given up for good when she had taken down SD-6 and the Alliance. But here she was again, lying to her friends, her family, random people, left and right.   
  
She slid out of the car she had found at the airport and entered the hotel the Covenant had placed her in. It always amazed her at how much of the city this young organization was involved in. Almost every building had some connection to the Covenant.   
  
Getting into the elevator, she went to press the button for the eleventh floor. When she got to her room door, she saw a note taped on it. It appeared that while she was gone, she and Sark got reassigned to a facility in Algeria. He had left her a ticket and a request that she find him the second she got to their destination.   
  
Sighing, she went back down the eleven floors and hailed a cab outside of the hotel. She needed a drink.

* * *

If she hadn't had those ten or so vodkas on the plane to Algeria, she might have realized that seeing him immediately after her arrival was a huge mistake. Unfortunately, she let the alcohol do both the talking and the walking.   
  
She pounded noisily on his door until he answered.   
  
"Do you realize that it is four in the morning, Bristow?" he growled when he saw who was at the door.   
  
"Good morning to you, too, sunshine," she answered as she pushed her way into the room. "Nice place."   
  
"You're completely pissed, aren't you?" Sark asked, watching her enter the room. "What do you want?"   
  
"I want you to explain to me why I accepted your offer. My whole life is ruined because I had faith in you, and I just want you to prove to me just how big a moron I really am. Tell me. Was the goal of this whole scheme to ruin my life?"   
  
"What happened while you were gone?"   
  
"You don't know," she said, laughing a little too loudly. She got mad and picked up the first thing she could find, which happened to be a shot glass. Sark managed to duck in time as it came flying at his head and shattered on the wall.   
  
"Bloody hell, Sydney! What was that for?"   
  
"You have to know, don't you? I mean, you're the one that told me things had changed."   
  
"That stupid comment I made about Los Angeles was just to make you mad. You almost tried to kill me, Sydney. I was angry. I meant nothing by it. I would have told you that in the morning if you hadn't taken off for Rome."   
  
"Oh." She lay down on the bed. "Well it seems like the man of my dreams, the man I should be with right now, has given up on the idea that I'm alive. He's met some other woman and they seem very happy." She looked over at him and patted the area next to her. "Come sit down with me."   
  
Sark sent her a strange look as he sat about three feet away from where she intended. "You should really get some sleep. You've been through some trauma and you're really not looking good right now."   
  
She smiled at him in what she thought was a seductive manner. Really, it just looked goofy. "I thought you always believed I looked good. Isn't that what this is really about? You fancy me."   
  
"I do not," Sark said in disgust. "Especially not when you're drunk. Why can't you Americans hold your liquor?"   
  
Sydney sat up and pouted at him. "Why are you always insulting me?"   
  
"I don't know," he answered truthfully.   
  
"I think it's a defense mechanism."   
  
"For what?"   
  
"To hide the fact that you want to kiss me every time I talk."   
  
"You're really piss drunk, Sydney." She looked over at him and smiled wickedly. "What are you doing?" he asked tentatively as she got up off the bed.   
  
"I'm making myself more presentable." Sydney grabbed the ends of the shirt she was wearing and lifted it up over her head. Before he realized what she was doing, she had slipped off her pants and was standing in front of him in her underwear. "Don't try to pretend like you want me to stop."   
  
He stared in awe as she sat back down on the bed and crawled over to where he was sitting. Sydney knew she looked almost predatory. She could see the indecision on his face. He was tempted to let her keep going. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on what angle she looked at it, rationality won out. "You need to stop this right now."   
  
He moved to stand up, but she grabbed his arm roughly and threw him back down on the bed. In a blink of an eye, she was sitting on top of him, straddling his torso with her legs. She tore his shirt open with one strong rip and lowered her lips to his chest.   
  
"Stop," he said as she teased his nipple with her tongue.   
  
She sat up and looked him in the eye. "That didn't sound too convincing."   
  
"Let me try again."   
  
He didn't get his second chance because she leaned back down again and pressed her lips roughly to his while grinding her hips roughly into his body. Every thought he had been thinking previously rushed out of his mind in one big gust. He had always imagined what it would be like to kiss Sydney Bristow, to touch Sydney Bristow. He had supposed she was pretty good at this sort of thing, considering that he hadn't discovered a thing yet that she was bad at. But he had never dreamed that she was this good. He didn't think that women could be this good.  
  
Almost as if she could read his mind, she eased up and began to nibble on his bottom lip. He groaned lightly. "Like that, do you?" she teased.   
  
He grabbed her waist and flipped her over so that she was lying under the weight of his body. "You do realize why you're doing this?"   
  
"Enlighten me, O Great One," she said with a smile as she reached down and began to unzip his pants.   
  
"You're just trying to get rid of the pain your precious handler has created."   
  
"So what if I am? Sometimes you just need a mindless fuck to take your wits off the problem." She pushed his pants down off of his legs and began to kiss his neck rather roughly. "You don't seem to mind," she whispered in his ear.   
  
"That man was never good enough for you, Sydney," Sark said. "He never seemed like the kind of man you need to satisfy you."   
  
"And you are?" she asked, intrigued.   
  
"I don't know about that," he said with a smirk.   
  
"But you're willing to try right?"   
  
He just smiled at her as he lowered his lips to hers once more.

* * *

Sydney was woken up the next morning by some one coughing. She threw a pillow over her head and prayed for the noise to stop. That ninth and tenth vodka on the plane were turning out to not be as great a thing as she thought the day before.   
  
"I don't mean to interrupt," said a foreign voice.   
  
Sydney pushed the pillow down so that she could look at who had broken in to her hotel room. The first thing she noticed was that she wasn't in her room. The second thing she noticed was that she wasn't alone.   
  
"Hello, sweetheart," Sark said from beside her with a smirk. "Meet your new partner, Simon Walker."   
  
Sydney waved weakly at the man who was standing in front of her with a pompous grin on his face.   
  
"So you're the infamous Julia Thorne," Simon said.   
  
"I can't say I've ever heard of you," Sydney answered, slipping into her alias. As much as she wanted to kick Simon out and act totally embarrassed at being caught in bed with Sark, she knew that was something that Julia would never do. A woman like Julia took attractive men into her bed all the time.   
  
"They said you were a sharp one. I like a girl with sass."   
  
Sydney got out of bed with no self-consciousness about her complete nudity. She grabbed a bathrobe out of Sark's wardrobe and slipped it on. "Are you here on business or pleasure, Simon?" she said walking over to him and touching his cheek lightly.   
  
"I really wish I could say pleasure, darling."   
  
"Maybe later," Sydney said. She glanced behind her shoulder at Sark and was pleased to see a not so pleasant look on his face. Served him right for forcing her to take on this Julia persona all the time. "Would you excuse me, Julian?"   
  
Sark nodded. Her question had caught him off guard. When had she learned his first name?   
  
"I'll be back to talk about my next mission later tonight," she said with a wink before she closed the door. 'Score one for Sydney,' she thought with a smirk.   
"I wasn't aware that you and Mr. Sark were intimate," Simon said as they began to walk down the hall.   
  
"What can I say? I got a little bored last night. There's not much to do when the business slows down."

* * *

Sydney let herself fall into the Julia persona completely and didn't falter out of it once during Simon's whole debriefing. By the end, she had him eating out of the palm of her hand. Men were so easy.   
  
She promised him she'd see him before they left for their mission the next day and then left him alone in the room the Covenant used for emergency debriefings. Not wanting to waste any time, she skipped the elevator and ran up the five flights of stairs to Sark's floor. She was just hoping that no one was around to see Julia do something so out of character as rush around the building and then burst into another agent's room without warning. Without knocking, she burst into his room.   
  
It was empty.   
  
"Damnit!" she screamed and punched the wall hard. The pain that shot through her arm managed to dull her anger a little bit.   
  
She had no idea how he had managed to give her the slip, but it looked like she would have to save her questions for Sark for another day.

* * *

Sydney worked beside Simon Walker for two months without hearing or seeing Sark at all. There was not even a mention of his name. It was like he disappeared off the face of the earth, and no one cared to comment on it.   
  
And then one day, he just waltzed into her room with the same old smirk on his face. "Sydney."   
  
She tried not to look mad or confused. In fact, she tried to show little to no emotion at all. "Why did you tell me that I was being assigned a new partner?"   
  
"You didn't give me much time that night," Sark said with a smirk. "By the way, you were better than I imagined."   
  
"Pig," she growled as she sat down on the bed. Memories of that night two months earlier came flooding back, causing her to stand up and reposition herself leaning up against the wall. If she hadn't already been furious with him, the cocky grin that was on his face would have fueled her temper.   
  
He held up his hands in surrender. "Please don't try to kill me again. I really don't know if you'll be able to hold yourself back like you did the last time."   
  
Sydney couldn't help but crack a smile. It had been rather fun pretending like she was going to end his life. Though he was right. In the state she was in currently, she probably would end up killing him. "So, you're back," she stated simply.   
  
"Yes, I am."   
  
"And I'm back to working 'faithfully' for the Covenant."   
  
"Yes, you are. I don't really want to know what happened while you were gone, where you went. It will only cloud the work that needs to be done here." Sark went over and leaned against the wall next to her. "I came here because I need to talk to you about Walker."   
  
"He seems like a generally nice guy for a man employed by an evil organization. He gets the job done when we're out in the field. "   
  
"Too bad that you're sabotaging everything every step of the way." 

Sydney laughed. "How do you know that I'm sabotaging him?"

"Because you could never risk a good set-up, Sydney. Never." He looked pleased to hear her laugh again at his words. "He's not a nice guy, though, Sydney. You need to watch yourself around him. Unlike me, he won't put up with your mouthing off and mean looks. He'll shoot you in a heartbeat."   
  
"I can take care of myself. I've been taking care of myself for the past two months without any help from you."   
  
"I know that. But I really need you to be at the top of your game for this mission you're going on in a week. I don't want you to lose focus on what's at stake just because Simon Walker provides you with the kind of distraction that you demanded of me the night you returned."   
  
"He helps me clear my head at the end of the night. And can we please not mention that night every again?" she asked politely.   
  
"For now, I can agree to that. But eventually we do need to talk about it. Because what happened was not exactly… how did you term it… a mindless fuck?"   
  
Sydney nodded in agreement just to get him to stop talking about that night. "So why are you so adamant about me not screwing up this mission in particular? You've never been concerned for my performance in the past."   
  
"Well, all your past missions haven't affected me personally."   
  
"And how does this one affect you? Simon said that all we had to do was get information from this old Russian guy and then kill him. It's as simple a mission as they come in the Covenant."   
  
"First, you're really starting to concern me with how easy you've gotten with the idea of killing." She shrugged at him. "But we won't get into that right now. That old Russian guy that you have to kill is my father, Sydney."   
  
"Your father is an ex-Russian diplomat who is now an expert in Rambaldi and currently poses the majority of the keys need to locate the damn artifact the Covenant has had me working on locating the whole time I've been here?"   
  
"In a word… yes." Sark looked at her sheepishly. "If you knew the man, you might know why I was hesitant to let you know anything about my personal life."   
  
"If he's such a bastard, than why are you so concerned for him?"   
  
"He's still my father, Sydney. And as much as I hate him, he deserves a better death than this."   
  
"It always seemed to me like you hated your family or at least the fictitious family I created for you in my head. I constantly imagined they were the reason you were driven to this evil life."   
  
"In a way, he was." Sark sighed and sat down on the bed. "I always imagined that if my father were to be killed, I would be the one doing the killing."   
  
Sydney sat down next to him. "That's a horrible thought."   
  
"I know. But it just goes to show you how hard and callous I've gotten over the years. Things have changed, though."   
  
"How so?"   
  
"I found out that my father was the man the Covenant was putting you and Walker into position to kill that night I disappeared from Algeria. That's where I've been the past two months. I figured if my old man had to die, I should at least figure out the reason why. And if need be, I would come up with a reason why I should be the man doing the killing."   
  
"And what did you find out?"   
  
"I found out that he doesn't deserve to be killed. He hasn't done anything wrong except the whole horrible parent thing."   
  
"I can relate," Sydney said, thinking of the way Jack had raised her. She had been so confused when he tried to convince her that her nanny and the cook weren't her real parents when she was seven years old. Her father had never really been the poster child for good parenting.   
  
"Sydney, what I'm going to ask of you is going to be extremely difficult for you to carry out." He paused and looked down at his hands. "I need you to figure out a way to keep my father alive. Do whatever you have to. Just don't let him die."   
  
She placed her hands on top of his and waited until he looked up into her eyes. "I promise. You can have faith in me."   
  
"I already do," he answered. She could feel the look in her eyes change as she unconsciously moved her face closer in to his. He smiled as she let her lips brush his lightly before pulling away. "So, are you willing to admit that this is something?"   
  
"I thought I told you not to mention that again."   
  
"You told me not to mention that night. You didn't say anything about mentioning the repercussions."   
  
"Go to hell," she said as she stood up. As she opened the door, she couldn't help but turn around and smile at him. Sometimes she was so frustrated by the fact that he was always right.

* * *

After that night she talked with Sark, she stopped sleeping with Simon. She had claimed boredom when he asked her what had changed. However, she couldn't pinpoint a real reason why she was pulling herself back from Simon. True, Sark had told her that he wasn't the best person in the world, but when had she ever listened to Sark's advice?   
  
"Right about now," she muttered as she zipped up the tiny black dress she had been given for her next assignment. One positive thing that could be said about the Covenant, they never sent her out looking like a hooker. She was always either classy or ready for battle. There were no tight blue Lycra dresses to be worn. 

Right on time, there was a knock at her door. "Come in, Simon," she yelled.   
  
"It's not Simon," Sark said as he entered.   
  
She turned around, and she smiled in appreciation. Sark wasn't wearing anything too out of the ordinary, just a simple pair of pants and a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Sydney had the notion that the man could never look bad in anything he wore. "What are you doing here?" she asked as she turned back to the mirror to make a few last minute alterations to her outfit.   
  
"Walker can't make it to this mission. He's busy gathering intel on your mission to kill my father. So I volunteered my services. You're my partner tonight, Sydney."   
  
"By the way, you really have to stop calling me Sydney. Someone important will hear you and know that we've been plotting together for over a year."   
  
"I like calling you Sydney. It adds a certain amount of danger to what we're doing."   
  
"Isn't there enough danger?"   
  
"There can never be enough danger. I thrive on it."   
  
"Speaking of putting me in danger, don't I have a say in who I go on missions with?" she questioned without turning around to look at him.   
  
"No. Are you ready?"   
  
She smiled. "I was born ready."   
  
Sark offered his arm, and she took it. "You seem in a much better mood today than I've seen in months. Why is that?"   
  
"I don't know. Things just look brighter." They walked in silence for a few steps. "So, where are we off to?"   
  
"There's this cheesy bar in downtown London that we need to meet a contact at."   
  
She looked at him strangely. "Okay. That was an extremely shady way of talking. I need more details, and I need them now."   
  
"Our contact is Allison Doren," Sark said without looking at her.   
  
Sydney stopped in her tracks and took her arm out of Sark's. "We're going to meet the woman that killed my best friend and tried to ruin my life. I thought she was dead."   
  
"It's hard to kill Ally."   
  
"Oh? It's Ally, is it?" She crossed her arms in front of her chest and began to tap her foot. Conversations with Sark were always so frustrating, no matter how hard she tried to be civil.   
  
"We knew each other when she went through the doubling process."   
  
"And by knew each other you mean?"   
  
Sark rolled his eyes at her and began to walk away. He shouted over his shoulder, "I am not discussing this with you, Sydney."   
  
The rest of the walk out to Sark's BMW, to the airport, and onto the plane was in total silence. Sydney knew that the Covenant was testing her by making her meet Allison. They wanted to make sure the brainwashing was still in place. Julia Thorne would have no qualms about meeting Allison. Sydney Bristow on the other hand wouldn't be able to take it.   
  
"Are we going to go the whole plane ride without talking?" Sark asked.   
  
She glared at him. "Yes. Unless you want to explain to me what your previous relationship with my best friend's murderer is."   
  
He sighed. "Fine. Like I said, we met during the doubling process. She was vulnerable. Sloane wanted her to have someone she could depend on. So he told me to get involved with her. I'll admit, it was nice having someone rely on me." He looked up at Sydney, and she was happy to see he noticed the cold look in her eye. "What's wrong? I thought you wanted to know."   
  
"Is that what this is?" she said through her teeth. "Did the Covenant assign you to me because they thought I was vulnerable and needed someone to rely on?"   
  
"No."   
  
"I don't believe you."   
  
"You should. The Covenant didn't assign me to you at all. I explained that Sydney Bristow and I had had a previous relationship and that maybe having a familiar face in Julia Thorne's life might make the process adhere a little better. I saw how vulnerable you would be if you agreed to infiltrate the Covenant. I decided that you needed someone to rely on. You're an all right agent, Sydney. And as much as I hate you sometimes, I'm not going to let you go through this alone."   
  
Sydney nodded. "So you slept with Allison, didn't you?"   
  
"You are the queen of subject changes tonight."   
  
"I just want to get my facts straight before going in."   
  
"Allison and I were intimate. She was a good distraction. Just like Simon is to you."   
  
"Was," Sydney corrected absentmindedly.   
  
"What do you mean 'was'?"   
  
"I told him that I was bored with him and that I didn't really want to go there anymore. It was mostly the truth. And it had nothing to do with what you said to me about him."   
  
"I'm sure it didn't."   
  
Sydney smiled and returned to the book she was reading. As much as he made her mad, missions were always easier if she knew she was on good terms with him.

* * *

The bar was exactly as Sark described it: cheesy. There were chairs present in every color imaginable, and the speaker system was blaring bad eighties music. It seemed like the owner of the bar had a passion for weapons because there were some strange showpieces mounted on the walls here and there. It was definitely the worst bar she had ever seen, and therefore, the least likely one in which she could be spotted by the CIA or any other intelligence organization.   
  
With regret, they both check their guns at the door. Sydney hadn't walked more than five feet into the bar before a skuzzy old man had noticed her and walked over to hit on her. It slightly amused her that Sark had almost immediately placed his arm protectively around her.   
  
"What's that for?" she said, motioning at his still present arm on her shoulder after the man had been scared away.   
  
"Partners don't let partners get picked up by cheeky old men." He shifted his hand down from her shoulder to her waist and squeezed her toward him slightly.   
  
She laughed without looking over at him, knowing there was a smirk on his face. Her mood changed considerably as she met eyes with their target.   
  
"Allison's here."   
  
"Good," Sark replied. "We can get this over with and get back to St. Petersburg. I don't like the fact that the Covenant is risking you being out in the open."   
  
Allison looked skeptically at them as they walked towards her. Sydney could tell that her eyes were focused on the arm Sark was still holding protectively around her waist   
  
"Ally, I don't think you've met Julia Thorne. Julia, this is Allison Doren. She's a free agent now, aren't you, love?"   
  
"Yes. My previous employer has disappeared from the game so I'm doing whatever and working for whoever I want now. It's nice."   
  
As they took their seats across from Allison, Sark asked, "So what does the Covenant want with you?"   
  
"Let's not talk business right off the bat, Julian." She leaned back in her chair and turned her cold gaze onto Sydney. "So, are you his new play thing, Julia?"   
  
Sydney glared at her and leaned forward. "I'm no one's play thing."   
  
"Well, be careful. He doesn't form emotional attachments. He'll leave you behind in a heartbeat if you suddenly become an inconvenience."   
  
"Don't bring up what happened in the fire," Sark hissed.   
  
Sydney leaned back, pretending to be uninterested when she was just the opposite. Unless there was some other momentous fire that both Sark and Allison were involved in recently, she must be referring to what went on the night the Covenant took her.   
  
Allison turned to Sydney. "Over a year ago, I had this important assignment to basically destroy this CIA agent's life from the inside. It was fun considering this girl had about as perfect a life as you could get, and the idiot didn't even realize it. Well, I did my job and almost died because of it. The bitch shot me three times. Sark here was my partner during the whole undercover assignment. He was supposed to come in once I had knocked this girl unconscious and help the Covenant finish her off. But you know what he did?"   
  
"What?" Sydney asked, hoping it sounded disinterested.   
  
"He ignored my semi-conscious, bleeding body and insisted that the Covenant not kill the girl I had just neutralized. It was like a knife in my back, Julian."   
  
"You and I never really worked, Ally. You know that. Don't start trying to say that what happened was entirely my fault. You didn't do your job right anyway. You let her shoot you three times. It's not my job to carry you through these missions."   
  
"But I thought that maybe you would have had some feeling that I could have died in there."   
  
"You can't die that easily."   
  
"I was shot three times, you bastard! Anyone can die from that. All you cared about was Bristow. You couldn't just let her die. All of our lives would have been easier."   
  
"Who is this Bristow girl? She sounds like a handful," Sydney said, trying not to laugh.   
  
"She is," Sark said, glaring at her.   
  
"He loves her," Allison said, rolling her eyes. "Always has."   
  
Sydney looked at him in surprise.   
  
Sark tried to keep from meeting her eyes. He cleared him throat and sat on the edge of the chair, alert. "Let's get down to business. You've said what you needed to, Ally. I'm not yours to play with anymore. What are Julia and I doing here?"   
  
"The Covenant knows I have some information about the Rambaldi cube you are searching for. You have some information that I need for what I'm working on. We've come to agree that an even exchange is the best solution."   
  
"I heard no such thing," Sydney said.   
  
"Sorry. Julia's very skeptical of new faces," Sark explained. "So you're searching for Rambaldi too now?"   
  
"I didn't say that, but it's a job," Allison answered.   
  
"I don't think this is the right situation for information exchange. I'm getting bad vibes from this place…" She paused and looked Allison straight in the eye. "…and from you. I don't deal well with being uncomfortable. If you want an exchange, it will have to be elsewhere."   
  
Nodding, Allison stood up. "If you excuse me, I'm just going to call my employer and see if he'll agree to another exchange time and location. The man doesn't deal well with changes, so there are no guarantees, and we don't want to go to the trouble of setting it all up to have my employer shoot it down."   
  
Sydney watched as Allison pushed through the bar crowd to walk over to the bar and motioned for the bartender to give her the phone. "Okay, she still creeps me out."   
  
"Allison takes a little while to get used to."   
  
"So, you love me, huh?" she joked.   
  
"She'll say anything just to toy with you. I think she got some sick pleasure of being able to talk about you without you realizing what she was doing."   
  
Sydney smiled and looked over at Sark. "You know, I wasn't lying when I said that this place was giving me the creeps. I don't think Allison is telling us the truth about an exchange."   
  
"Neither do I," Sark said as he scanned the room.   
  
Sydney smirked as Tainted Love came on through the speaker system. She started to hum softly and sing to herself, "Sometimes I feel I've got to… uh uh… run away. I've got to… uh uh… get away… from the pain that you drive into the heart of me."   
  
She noticed that Sark wasn't as amused by the bar's choice of song as she was which only fueled her more. She leaned over and whispered in his ear. "Take my tears and that's not nearly all... tainted love." She stopped her singing as she saw Sark's eye catch on something.   
  
"We need to go. Now," he demanded.   
  
"What's the matter?" she asked.   
  
"This bar has about ten cameras zeroed in on us right now. That's not normal." He stood up and grabbed her hand. "My guess is Allison's job is not to find the cube but to find us."   
  
As if on target, gunshots rang out through the bar in the direction of where Sark and Sydney were standing. They both flung themselves to the ground purely by instinct, watching the crowd of bar patrons immediately run for the first available exit.   
  
"What do we do?" Sydney screamed, covering her head with her arms. They were stuck on the floor of probably the cheesiest bar of all of England with no weapons and no way out.   
  
"Improvise," Sark yelled into her ear. "That's what you're good at."   
  
Sydney's eyes fell on something hanging on the wall. "When I move, you go take out Allison. She has a lot to answer for."   
  
Sark didn't have time to protest before Sydney was up and ripping a samurai sword off of the wall. She launched herself up onto the tables and, hopping from one to the other, began to take out the shooters. Not wanting to waste the opening at all, Sark started to run in the opposite direction where Allison was still standing. Sydney had banked on the fact that Allison was too egotistic to leave and miss the results of her handiwork.   
  
Allison's eyes widened as she saw Sydney grab a gun off of one of the downed shooters and begin to shoot some cover fire for Sark. She hopped up over the bar and crouched behind it for cover.   
  
"Sark!" Sydney yelled, making him stop and turn around. She threw her gun up into the air all the way across the bar while spinning to take out a couple more of Allison's colleagues.   
  
He caught the gun with ease. "Thanks," he yelled as he slid over the bar and dropped down right on his knees in front of Allison.   
  
"Fancy meeting you here, Ally." He trained the gun on her. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Sydney who was still moving to the steady pulse of Tainted Love. It was always a joy to watch her at work. He would never tell her this, but she really was one of the best agents he had ever come into contact with.   
  
When she had made short work of the guards, she joined Sark behind the bar.   
  
"Did everyone tell you that your sanity might not be all there?" Sark said.   
  
"About a million times. I like the fact that I'm considered a little unhinged."   
  
"A little?" Sark said.   
  
"So, Allison, explain what that was all about," Sydney said, pointing the sword at her throat. "Now."   
  
"My boss seems to think that you're both key to some weird prophecy. He offered me a considerable sum of money to get you two in the same place together. All I had to do was call him and let his men do the work."   
  
"But you just couldn't get yourself to leave, could you?" Sark taunted. "You had to stick around so that we saw you had beaten us."   
  
"Well, you didn't beat us," Sydney said. She took the handle of the sword she was holding and smashed it hard into Allison's temple. "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I break your concentration? I know how you love these interrogations," she joked to Sark.   
  
She lifted her boot up and kicked Allison hard in the face, this time knocking her unconscious. Allison shrugged down onto the floor. "Sorry. I got tired of hearing her talk."   
  
"Do you want to kill her?" Sark asked honestly.   
  
"No. I want to prolong her suffering a little more. Plus, I'm enjoying the fact that she thinks she can say anything to me because I'm not Sydney Bristow anymore."   
  
Sydney and Sark both turned and started to walk out of the bar which had been almost utterly destroyed. "Maybe she'll be able to tell me about what exactly went on with Francie and that whole situation," she said. "And maybe she can explain to me what part you had in all of it."   
  
Sark looked at her with a smirk. "I'm not one to divulge information."   
  
"Yeah. Being mysterious is your little spy gimmick. I understand."   
  
"I don't have a gimmick." 

"Everyone has a gimmick."

Sark held the bar door open for her. "Are you going to let go of that sword anytime soon?"   
  
"No. I'm kind of fond of it." Sark started to laugh. "What?"   
  
"Funny, you like samurai swords... I like baseball. We all have our own little quirks."   
  
She smiled at him. "You know, we make a good team."   
  
"Haven't I been saying that for forever?" he yelled, throwing his hands up into the air in frustration.   
  
"Let's get back to St. Petersburg."   
  
They walked in silence for a minute before Sark turned to her. "You know, I'm starting to think this Julia Thorne isn't so bad. I might actually be willing to admit that she's my… dare I say it… friend."   
  
"Thank you, Julian," Sydney said. "For everything."   
  
In the back of her head, though, a small worry popped up. She had never told him what went on in Los Angeles when she returned there that day two months ago. He didn't know that she was feeding intel to Kendall, that she was helping out the CIA. And for some reason, it bothered her that she wasn't able to tell him what was going on.

* * *

Sark bid Sydney a quick goodbye once they were standing in front of her hotel room door. They both went their separate ways agreeing to meet up in the morning to discuss how much of what went on in London they were actually going to let the Covenant know. Sydney changed into a pair of sweats and a t-shirt and pulled her now properly dyed blonde hair back into a ponytail. She still couldn't believe that she had agreed to let the Covenant dye her hair. At least it looked natural now.   
  
After ten minutes of sitting around, doing nothing but thinking about things she shouldn't be, she grabbed her room key and walked out the door. She knew the logical choice would to go up one flight of stairs, knock on Simon's door, and relieve all of her frustrations that way. But when had she ever chosen the easy way out?   
  
She knocked on Sark's door loudly until he answered, half asleep and half clothed. "What is it, Julia?" 

"Julia?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"There are two cameras in the hallway trained on you right now."

Pushing past him and shutting the door behind herself, she commended him, "Even when you're half asleep, you still manage to remember to call me Julia when we're in public. You're good."   
  
"Syd. What do you want? It's four in the morning. We just got off of a not-so-fun mission."   
  
"I can't sleep. Too many thoughts going through my mind."   
  
"So, how am I supposed to help you with that? If you wanted someone to take your mind off things, Walker's probably upstairs ready and waiting."   
  
"I told you that I ended it with Simon Walker."   
  
"Because you were bored, right?" he said with a smirk as he sat down on the bed and rubbed his eyes.   
  
"Partially, yeah. The man isn't very three-dimensional. Always one thing and one thing only on his mind." Sark looked at her with a wicked grin on his face. "The cube. I was talking about the cube."   
  
"I highly doubt the cube was what kept him motivated." He sighed and leaned back in bed. "So what is the other part? The other reason you left Walker out in the cold?"   
  
"I found someone much more interesting," she said looking at him intently.   
  
"Why, Sydney Bristow! Are you referring to me?" He sat back up as the conversation began to intrigue him.  
  
"Yeah. I'm tired of dancing around it. There's something between us. You can't deny it."   
  
"No, I can't. But I can also tell you that sleeping with me isn't going to take your mind off things."   
  
She sat down on the bed next to him. "Actually, it should. The thoughts that have been bothering me haven't really had to do anything with the Covenant or the CIA."   
  
"Really?" Sark said with a look of mock surprise on his face. "You've been thinking inappropriate thoughts about me, have you?"   
  
"I think that's okay considering we've already done something 'inappropriate'."   
  
Sark laughed. He reached up and turned off the bedside lamp. "You just make sure Walker knows that I had you first. I don't want him thinking I'm just scrounging for leftovers."   
  
"That was really sweet," she joked as she lie down next to him. "Now I know why I'm here."   
  
"Go to sleep, Bristow. I'm too tired to keep arguing." He pulled her into his arms.   
  
Sydney complied with his request for a few minutes until she was sure he had almost fallen asleep again. "We're going to have to work on that stamina thing," she whispered.   
  
He promptly pushed her out of a bed and on to the floor with a laugh.

* * *

After that moment, the lies and deception got easier for Sydney. It was hard for her to pretend like she was intent to kill Andrean Lazarey, but she managed to convince Simon that's exactly what she was doing. She went to Lazarey the night before she and Simon were scheduled to extract the information and then murder him. She offered a deal, one that no one but her and Kendall knew the specifics of.   
  
Lazarey was a reasonable man. He realized the situation he had been placed in and agreed to work with Sydney on locating the final few keys and the Rambaldi cube.   
  
She hated lying to Sark about his father, but she didn't have the heart to tell him that she had been in contact with the CIA. He had told her in the very beginning contacting the CIA would compromise everything they had been trying to do. So, she lied to him, too. She was just racking up the lies now. Maybe her new life wasn't that much different from her old.  
  
For nine months, her lies kept her life running smooth. She would go on missions trying to locate the Rambaldi cube with Simon or she would go on covert missions with Lazarey to locate the keys. Every night she was home, she spent with Sark, unwinding. He had slowly become her pillar of strength, and she wasn't afraid of what they were anymore.   
  
She was fine keeping up with the lies until it was time for her and Lazarey to actually come into possession of the cube.   
  
The mission should have been easy. Put all twelve keys into their corresponding locks. Get the Rambaldi cube. Get out. Return to normal lives.   
  
Sure, Sydney wasn't exactly certain of what normal life the plan was referring to. Did it mean return to her life as Julia Thorne with Sark? Or did it mean it was finally time for her to return to her life as Sydney Bristow with the CIA? Is that what she wanted? To return to L.A.?   
  
She never found out. Namibia didn't go smoothly as planned. One of the locks stuck, and in the end, she was forced to sever Lazarey's hand at the wrist. Together they got the cube and got out before the walls of the cave fell in on them.   
  
They collapsed in a heap outside on the desert sands. Sydney had no idea how she was going to get Lazarey the medical attention he deserved when she couldn't even sum up the strength to move.   
  
She didn't have much time to start thinking up options as two hands grasped her arms and hauled her to her feet. "What the hell are you doing here, Sark?" she hissed. as her vision cleared and she focused on his face.   
  
"I should ask the same thing of you." He saw her glance down at his father's unconscious body. "There's a medical chopper flying in right now to get my father attention. I paid for it out of my own pocket so he won't be tied to any of us when it lands. From there, he can go off into obscurity just like you promised."   
  
"How do you know what I promised him?" She reached down, picked up the cube, and put it into the bag she had around her shoulder.   
  
"I found out what you've been up to the past nine months a few hours ago. I came straight here. Sydney, you can't hand that cube over to the CIA."   
  
"Because you want it, right?"   
  
"No. Because in the CIA's hands it will probably cause you more pain. They aren't just going to throw that cube into deep storage and forget about it. They're going to want to figure out what it is and all the implications of it. Your future will be an endless line of testing and questioning. You won't have a life anymore."   
  
Sydney looked at him in confusion. "So, you don't want the cube for yourself?"   
  
"That was never the point, Sydney. Honestly, my whole point in this was making sure you made it out alive. This life has destroyed people a lot stronger than you, and you're pretty damn strong. I couldn't let it do that to you."   
  
She leaned in and kissed him lightly as the sound of a helicopter came into hearing. "That's your father's ride."   
  
"The men know to pretend that you and I aren't here. I gave them instructions to pick my father up and deposit him at an adequate hospital. From there, he gets to decide where his life goes."   
  
"And what about our life? The cube is found. So now what?"   
  
"You need to decide if you want to give the CIA the cube. And I need you to tell me if there's anything else you've been hiding." 

"No. My only secret from you was my involvement with Kendall and the CIA. I couldn't tell you because I thought you would be too angry. It is the one thing you told me not to do, the one thing you said would hurt my chances of getting out of this situation without being hurt."

"And look where you are now. Right smack in the middle of a moral dilemma."

Sydney nodded and started walking towards the vehicle she and Lazarey came in. "What do you think I should do?"   
  
"What do I think you should do or what do I want you to do?" he asked.   
  
"Either. Both."   
  
"I want you to just forget about everything and run away with me to somewhere no one will look for us. But what I think you should do, what you need to do, won't allow for that. You shouldn't give the cube to anyone, Sydney. You should hide it away somewhere that no one will find it. I found a place you could use. The Gratz Hotel. It would be perfect to house the cube. You've never been there, not now and not before. No one will guess you put the cube there."   
  
"That doesn't sound so bad."   
  
"It is bad, though. Bad for you and me."   
  
"What do you mean?" she asked as they reached the car and she walked around to the driver's side.   
  
"You'll need to have your memories erased. Not even you can remember where you left the cube if this is going to work."   
  
"Okay. So I get rid of my memories from now until I hide the cube. Not a problem." She motioned for him to get into the passenger's side. He walked over but didn't open the door.   
  
"No. If we're going to do this right, we have to do it one hundred percent. You need to erase your memories from the point that you shot Allison and lost consciousness."   
  
"But that would mean…" Her voice failed her. She couldn't even say the words.   
  
"That you would have to forget everything that's happened between us in the past two years."   
  
"I can't do that," she whispered.   
  
"Of course you can. Like I said, you're a strong woman, Sydney. You can go back to your life in Los Angeles and rebuild. You have a whole support system there to help you get through this."   
  
"No. I can't forget you. I don't want to." She wiped the tears out of her eyes and looked up at him from across the roof of the car. "I love you, Julian."   
  
"I know, Sydney. But there are greater things at play than love."   
  
"There's nothing greater than love. This can't be the only option."   
  
"It is. You have to give all this up. It's what you've wanted for two years."   
  
"I haven't wanted that for nine months now and you know it." She got into the car and slammed the door shut. After a minute, she heard the passenger's door open, and Sark get into the car. "I'm not doing it." She revved the engine and took off.  
  
They drove for over thirty miles in silence. "You are going to do this, Sydney. If you love me so much, you'll do this for me."   
  
"Oh, don't play that card with me, mister! I've proven how much I love and trust you time and again. I'm tired of having to be that person. It's time you made the big gesture and didn't force me to do what I don't want to do."   
  
"I thought I was making the big, selfless gesture by letting you out of this life. Working for the Covenant was not what you were born to do. It's not what you want to be doing. You need to go home, Sydney. I've come to realize that. You might think you're happy here, but you're not."   
  
"I'm happy when I'm with you."   
  
"I know. And it kills me to have to let you go."   
  
"Then don't," she said softly as she turned onto the main road. "Don't let me go. Be stubborn. We can fight to make this work."   
  
"No one you love will be able to accept this. Not in a million years."   
  
"I don't need them," she said wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.   
  
"You do need them. You always have. They're what keep you going."   
  
"Not anymore," she whispered. Taking a deep breath, she tried to think rationally and not emotionally for a moment. "So, if I agree to do this, which I'm not saying I will, what would it entail?"   
  
"The procedure is painless. I found a group of extremely competent doctors. It will take a couple hours to go through and the only thing you'll feel when it's over is a little emptiness from losing two years of your life and a lot of confusion. Before you go through it, though, I need you to make a video to send to Kendall. You can't just show up somewhere with no memory without letting him know that you did it for a reason. He has to know why you didn't give him the cube. You can't mention your connection to me in the video. That will just help whoever gets their hands on the tape to figure out where we might have stored the Rambaldi cube. If we're going to do this, we have to do it right."   
  
"Sounds too complicated," she said, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. "I'm not going to do it."   
  
"Don't be stubborn, Sydney. We both know that you have to do this. It's the only way to keep things safe." Sark was thrown off of his speech as he felt the car begin to accelerate. "Sydney. Slow down. I know you're pissed off, but you're going too fast."   
  
"It's not me. My foot is not on the gas." Her face suddenly lit up with understanding. "Simon! He let me use his car because I told him I needed something that could handle a little dust in its engine." 

"Simon's here?" Sark asked.

"We happened to have an assignment for the Covenant. I figured I could slip away and do this real quick with your father before going on the mission." She groaned. "He must have done something to it. But why would he have done that?"   
  
Sark grumbled as he realized what was going on. "Walker is a very vindictive, vengeful man. I warned you about him before. He wouldn't have appreciated the fact that you kicked him out of your life only to let me in." Sark looked down at her feet. "Are you even trying to press the brake?"   
  
"Of course I'm trying that." Sydney pumped the brake again just for good measure. Nothing happened. "Oh god," she muttered as she looked ahead. The road made a sharp right.   
  
"We're not going to make that turn," Sark said, verbalizing her thoughts seconds before she spun the wheel to avoid a full on collision with the building straight in front of them.   
  
They were both conscious long enough to feel the car begin to flip over in the air, striking the pavement hard during each rotation. There were car horns and screams erupting from everywhere over the crash and crunch of metal. When the car finally stopped spinning, Sark tried to focus his whole being on staying conscious and getting out of the car that was now upside down. The smell of gas was permeating the car. He turned to Sydney. "Syd, are you all right?"   
  
"I… I think so…" she muttered.   
  
She looked around and realized that her side of the car had endured the majority of the damage. The look on Sark's face told her that she wasn't looking too good. There was a deep gash running along the right side of her face that she could feel. Unclipping his seat belt, Sark slid out of the blown out window and hobbled around to the other side of the car. He immediately tried to unbuckle Sydney, but it wasn't working. "Your seat belt is jammed."   
  
"Leave me then…"   
  
He saw her eyes slip closed. "No! Don't go to sleep. I need you to stay awake until I get you out of this car." He reached into his back pocket and withdrew a knife. It only took him ten seconds to cut through the seat belt, but every second was beginning to feel like the last one they might have.   
  
Sydney's limp body hit the roof of the car, and Sark managed to drag it out without too much effort. He scooped her up in his arms and began to walk away from the horrible damaged car. They were only about twenty yards when something in the car sparked and lit all the gasoline that had been leaking.   
  
Sark could feel the blast sear the back of his neck slightly, but he didn't loosen his hold on Sydney.   
  
"What happened?" she asked, dragged back to semi-consciousness from the blast.   
  
He kissed her lightly on the forehead. "It doesn't matter now, Syd. We're safe."   
  
She nodded and let go of consciousness again.   
  
Sark smiled at her sadly. "I hope you can forgive me for what I'm about to do."

* * *

Sark sat outside of the doors to Sydney's room and waited for her to wake up for hours on end. The doctors said that she had received a little bit of trauma to her head so it might take her awhile. Sark knew that if she didn't wake up soon, he wouldn't be able to say goodbye to her.   
  
Finally, the time came.   
  
Walking into the room, he saw her lying motionless on the bed, exactly how she looked each time he had come into the room. It was no different.   
  
He stood right next to her and reached down to brush a piece of hair out of her face. "It's time for me to go. Looks like you're not going to be awake for most of the procedure. Be strong. I know that you can do this. And I hope, someday, you realize why I had to do this." He brushed a tear out of the corner of his eye. "I love you, Sydney. I think I always have. And right now, that doesn't fit into your life. Maybe someday down the road it will. I'll be waiting for then. But for now…"   
  
He leaned in and kissed her lightly on the forehead and then on the lips. "Forgive me."   
  
Walking out of the room, he didn't look back.   
  
Sydney would regret that she hadn't woken up in time. Because of that, she wasn't aware of the loss that Sark was prepared to go through to keep her safe, the sacrifices he was about to make for her well being.   
  
There were things he had to put into order. He needed to make sure the doctors knew that he also needed to go through the memory erasing process, but he would need new fabricated memories to replace his taken ones. Sydney would become suspicious if she knew that both of them were missing two years of their lives.   
  
Then there was the cube. He was sending it to the Gratz Hotel to be placed into a safety box until Sydney came to get it. If the memory erasing process went right, that should never happen.   
  
He entered a room down the hall from the one Sydney lay unconscious in. He slipped out of his clothes and into the medical scrubs they provided. Knowing he had a little time, he started the letter that would be critical to the plan.   
  
He hoped the CIA would listen to his demands. He was going to turn himself in, unconscious, under the direct agreement that the CIA cover up the fact that he has been out of their custody for two years. He made it clear that he wouldn't even know he had broken out of their custody. That was the only demand he had for his surrender.   
  
When the letter was finished, he sat down and waited for the doctors to come and take away the one real thing he had ever had in his life.   
  
His love for Sydney.   
  
A love neither one of them would remember.

* * *

Two days later, Sydney woke up in the streets of Hong Kong with no recollection of where she had been the past two years.

* * *

_The first memory and the last memory I have of my missing two years are one in the same. He's carrying me in his arms out of the fire, out of the flames. I know I should be scared. That my life is changing and maybe not for the better. The future is hazy and probably full of pain. I've made choices I've not always been happy about. But I'm not afraid. I'm under his protection and the safety of his arms.   
  
I'm not scared at all.   
  
But now I know I should be. _


End file.
